There are adverts on facebook?!?

Hooray for Adblock!

"It's a well known phenomenon that social networks encourage users to be "friends" with people they wouldn't have anything to do with in meatspace, however."

For example, I would never have considered being friends with Josef Stalin until Facebook comes along. The same is true of Pol Pot. I am sure they have some stories to tell, but I would not want them to know where I live. On Facebook, however, I can keep them at arm's length - or spoon's length, if you're into metaphors.

Also I am friends with Aldous Huxley, Phil Collins (three times, because he is multi-faceted), several cats, Roobard from Roobard and Custard, and John Foxx, former lead singer of Ultravox. And also Paris Hilton, who I choose as my avatar for that very reason.

I can't really see how Facebook can make any money outside of the traditional model of invasive banner ads and Adwords. As sites go it's a victim of its own success - you can't monetise the userbase because they'd sooner just jump ship to the next Web 2.0 darling, and if you're seen to be doing anything that could be construed as towing the corporate line (e.g. ads, tracking, etc) then suddenly you're no longer the plucky young upstart website - you're the corporate mouthpiece bought and paid for by the kind of people that talk earnestly about monetisation, incentivising, growing brands, etc. Urgh.

The users don't *want* Facebook to be associated with the corporate behemoths like Microsoft, yet the fact Facebook has so many users is what makes being involved with it appealing to companies. It's the ultimate self-defeating paradigm.

or is it "toeing the line" perchance </nitpick>

It's a sad, sad day when it pops across your Facebook stalker feature that, suddenly, Beelzebub has closed his Facebook account. And Joe Stalin. And the campus squirrel. And Bullwinkle J. Moose. And, ffs, the godawful Pontiac Aztec also closed its Facebook account!

Never logged into those accounts. Never paid them any mind whatsoever. But I closed them anyway. If I can hurt Facebook's membership numbers in even the least, maybe they'll get real and figure out that ad-driven business models are okay (if they work. Which they don't.) but privacy is something that exists out here in meatspace, and we like it a lot better when it continues to exist in bitspace.

There's something called Facebook?!?

Hooray for having a life!

There, fixed that for you

Ahem - psst ! Roobarb and Custardy - for those old enough to remember.

Phil

My wife's a facebook addict, consequently I see less and less of her as she spends most of her free time posting to virtual chums, leaving me free to enjoy a carefree life, except at mealtimes, when she insists that I move my laptop off the dining room table, the nerve of these people!!!

facebook is for nosy gossipy cats anyway... the only reason to have an account is to poke about on everyone else's page and see what they're doing when where and how. and those apps only amplify that. i find it laughable that those same people are complaining about privacy. i have a facebook yet i fully assume the fact that whatever i put up there its for everyone to see... and whatever apps people add only goes to show how megalomaniac they are...

a commodity, a sheep, a revenue stream, saleable information, a consumer, cattle, etc. If any Facebook users see themselves as thinking, feeling, sensitive and private individuals. Open your eyes, this is not how Facebook accountants and shareholders see you.

I'm just glad that my ego is not so big as to obscure common sense and self respect. So what if several million people will never know that I share a house with a woman and a cat called Angus. My heart does bleed for all those poor deprived people on Facebook who will never see a photograph of him (Angus the cat) They have my deepest sympathy and appologies for failing to make their lives complete.

They have my sympathy anyway, it must be a terrible bind having to tell people how brilliant and wonderful one is all the time.

Adam Curtis is a pretty smart guy. The age of the self has been with us for sometime. And now, fuelled by the recent rise of the "importance" of celebrity we have the bastard children of the two in the form of Facebook, Myspace etc.

Thank you for copy/pasting part of the article I just read. You seem to have forgot, however, to make any comment on it. What exactly is it you wanted to say ?